The prime minister really wants you to think of the children.

Earlier tonight, VICE Canada hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and MP Bill Blair for a town hall to raise some questions and concerns about the Liberal government’s plans to legalize the recreational production, distribution, and use of marijuana. In addition to reaffirming his government’s commitment to the public safety of children, here are the five big takeaways from the event where Trudeau took questions from VICE senior writer Manisha Krishnan and Head of Content Patrick McGuire, industry insiders, and people caught up in the current criminal court system.

1. There are no plans to fight the opioid crisis by legalizing or decriminalizing more drugs

In an emotionally-charged exchange near the end of the town hall, Trudeau was confronted by Zoe Dodd, a harm reduction worker on the front lines of Canada’s opioid epidemic who called the amount of overdose deaths in the last 18 months a “national disaster.” Citing the example of Portugal, where drug use has been decriminalized for more than a decade, she asked the prime minister if he would decriminalize other drugs—especially opioids—as a matter of public safety.

Trudeau replied that his government would not do this, saying that they only got a mandate to legalize marijuana. He also acknowledged that although “we need to do more,” the Liberals were softening the policies of the Harper administration with regards to prescription heroin and safe injection sites. Bill Blair also voiced his perspective that “the evidence does not necessarily show that [mass] decriminalization works,” and that the government should instead focus on providing treatment, rehabilitation, and front-line services.

The prime minister said the government needs to do more on the file but avoided making any promises.

2. Pardons won’t be happening anytime soon

When asked by Malik Scott, a young man facing criminal charges for possession of marijuana, if there were any plans to pardon people currently charged under laws due to be changed, the prime minister was largely evasive. He related to the crowd that his younger brother Michel, who died in an avalanche in 1998, was charged with marijuana possession not long before his death, but the family was confident he would bear the charges due to his father’s influence and their access to legal resources. Trudeau acknowledged that the justice system is often inequitable in this way, particularly for visible minorities like Scott.

Despite this admission, Trudeau remained largely noncommittal about plans for pardons, reparations, or even an apology to anyone convicted of marijuana charges under prohibition. Any future amnesty is TBD for an indeterminate time after legalization.

3. The medical marijuana regime will stay the same

Trudeau was emphatic that whatever else is going on with the legalization of recreational marijuana use, “the current medical marijuana regime will remain as-is.” The prime minister also suggested that, since many people currently illegally use medical marijuana services for recreational purposes, legalization will free up the strain on the medical sector and enable new research into the medical uses of cannabis—including as a substitute for opiates in the case of chronic pain.

Photo by Anthony Tuccitto

4. There will be room for smaller players…but Big Weed will rule

While the prime minister admitted that a lot of production of recreational cannabis will likely be handled by larger corporate operations, he was also emphatic that there will be room for smaller producers as well. He likened it to the alcohol industry, pointing out that while a lot of beer is produced by large brewers, Canadians also enjoy microbrews. The government is also actively encouraging the participation of Indigenous peoples in legal production.

However, Trudeau also emphasized that there was no guarantee that any small producers who have previously been convicted of possession or trafficking will be given licenses for production under the new framework. All licensing decisions would be handled on a case-by-case basis. He also acknowledged that although edibles are currently legal for medical use, their production and sale would not be considered for recreational regulation until sometime in the future.

5. The provinces will be making the real decisions

As repeatedly emphasized by the prime minister, “the provinces have the authority to introduce legislation that works for them.” Specifically, provincial and territorial governments will be responsible for setting and enforcing their own regulatory regimes where the minimum age of purchase, maximum sentences for offenses, and method of distribution, with the end goal of ensuring a “well-regulated, safe supply.”

In the event that a province or territory does not introduce a regulatory framework, Trudeau promised that Canadians living in those areas will still be able to obtain marijuana legally, although he did not specify how.

Bonus round: Trudeau does not want to be known as a pothead

Trudeau began the town hall by saying that he was a boring partier, who rarely ever touched weed in his youth and told us the well-known story of a dinner party several years ago (before he was Liberal leader but while he was an MP) where he smoked a joint that was passed around. He said he’s more a beer and bourbon guy, particularly Jack Daniels—which famously calls itself a Tennessee Whiskey, but who’s judging.

Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away (especially now that he’s discovered bombs). But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don’t believe me? Look one nation north, at Justin Trudeau.

Donald Trump is a creep and unpleasant to look at, but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite when it comes to climate change.

Photo Credit: Art Babych / Shutterstock.com

Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away (especially now that he’s discovered bombs). But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don’t believe me? Look one nation north, at Justin Trudeau.

Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over.

But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in DC.

Not rhetorically: Trudeau says all the right things, over and over. He’s got no Scott Pruitts in his cabinet: everyone who works for him says the right things. Indeed, they specialize in getting others to say them too – it was Canadian diplomats, and the country’s environment minister Catherine McKenna, who pushed at the Paris climate talks for a tougher-than-expected goal: holding the planet’s rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But those words are meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn, and that’s exactly what Trudeau is doing. He’s hard at work pushing for new pipelines through Canada and the US to carry yet more oil out of Alberta’s tarsands, which is one of the greatest climate disasters on the planet.

Last month, speaking at a Houston petroleum industry gathering, he got a standing ovation from the oilmen for saying “No country would find 173bn barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.”

That is to say, Canada, which represents one-half of 1% of the planet’s population, is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth’s remaining carbon budget. That is to say, Trump is a creep and a danger and unpleasant to look at, but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite.Yes, 173bn barrels is indeed the estimate for recoverable oil in the tar sands. So let’s do some math. If Canada digs up that oil and sells it to people to burn, it will produce, according to the math whizzes at Oil Change International, 30% of the carbon necessary to take us past the 1.5 degree target that Canada helped set in Paris.

This having-your-cake-and-burning-it-too is central to Canada’s self-image/energy policy. McKenna, confronted by Canada’s veteran environmentalist David Suzuki, said tartly “we have an incredible climate change plan that includes putting a price on carbon pollution, also investing in clean innovation. But we also know we need to get our natural resources to market and we’re doing both”. Right.

But doing the second negates the first – in fact, it completely overwhelms it. If Canada is busy shipping carbon all over the world, it doesn’t matter all that much if every Tim Horton’s stopped selling donuts and started peddling solar panels instead.

Canada’s got company in this scam. Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull is supposed to be more sensitive than his predecessor, a Trump-like blowhard. When he signed on his nation to the Paris climate accords, he said, “it is clear the agreement was a watershed, a turning point and the adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanised the international community and spurred on global action.”

Which is a fine thing to say, or would be, if your government wasn’t backing plans for the largest coal mine on earth. That single mine, in a country of 20 million, will produce 362% of the annual carbon emissions that everyone in the Philippines produces in the course of a year. It is, obviously, mathematically and morally absurd.

Trump, of course, is working just as eagerly to please the fossil fuel industry – he’s instructed the Bureau of Land Management to make permitting even easier for new oil and gas projects, for instance. And frackers won’t even have to keep track of how much methane they’re spewing under his new guidelines. And why should they? If you believe, as Trump apparently does, that global warming is a delusion, a hoax, a mirage, you might as well get out of the way.

Trump’s insulting the planet, in other words. But at least he’s not pretending otherwise.

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, the founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign, and the winner of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award.